Eurostar, the high-speed rail service
that links the UK with the Continent, has attracted record
passengers and boosted sales 15.5% after implementing a revenue
management software package.
Eurostar had its best year ever in 2007, carrying 8.26 million
passengers, 5% up on the previous year, pushing sales to £599m.
John Waddington, Eurostar's revenue optimisation senior manager,
said
JDA's revenue management software,
implemented by Eurostar in early 2006, has more than doubled the
number of pricing decisions that his team can process per
day.
This has freed staff to seek ways to grow revenues further by
focusing on the detailed planning and running of special
events.
The new software lets analysts model scenarios and view the
potential impacts on revenues before applying them to the live
booking
system.
"You can even tell the system that a promotion is running in a
national newspaper and gauge the potential impact on traveller
numbers and pricing," he said.
Early trials during a year-long project produced revenues
increases on Belgian leisure trains of almost 20% and led to a 27%
rise in traveller volumes.
Waddington said that by offering more seats at lower prices on
off-peak services the company will be able to carry more travellers
on the new high-speed network.
The revenue management data will also increase efficiency and
highlight cost-saving opportunities across the business.
The ability to process more data means more accurate and regular
reports are available: relevant price and seat availability
information goes to the commercial departments, and regular
traveller figures go to the customer services teams to plan
staffing requirements in the terminals, he said.
"Internal communication across the business has improved
significantly," said Waddington. "We're now able to inform various
departments how busy a train is likely to be, so that catering, for
instance, knows exactly how much food will be required on any
particular train."
Waddington said that price-sensitive forecasting is still fairly
new across the passenger transport industry, but that Eurostar now
had a system in place to ensure it remains extremely
competitive.